How to Schedule a task in windows azure worker role

Question

I have a simple Azure Worker role running that performs a task every day at 12 PM. Below is the code that accomplishes this.

public override void Run()
{
    try
    {
        while (true)
        {
              int time = Convert.ToInt32(DateTime.Now.TimeOfDay);
              if (time == 12)
              {
                   DoSomethingElse();
              }
        }

    }
    catch (Exception ex)
    {
        Log.Add(ex, true);
    }            
}

Here DoSomethingElse() is a method to send an email at every day 12 PM, and also fires once and only once per day.

How can I implement a scheduler that fire when the time is 12PM and execute DoSomethingElse().

My question is: Is this (above code) is the best method or use any 3rd party tool.

Answer 1

There are several other questions here that deal with this (and I've marked one above). Having said that, and at the risk of repeating what other answers already state:

In your case, a simple message on a Windows Azure Queue, time-delayed to not show up until noon, would work. This also helps deal with multi-instance scenarios: If you're running two instances of your role, you don't want the same scheduled task running twice, so you need a way to have only one of those instances execute this code. This is easily handled via queue message, or you could run scheduler code on a single instance by using something like a blob lease (which may only have one write-lock against it) as a mutex. This is covered in @smarx's blog post, here.

Answer 2

You could also use Quartz.Net http://quartznet.sourceforge.net/ using the blob lease mentioned ab ove is a great way to make sure only one of your instances is hosting tasks.

Using Quartz.Net to Schedule Jobs in Windows Azure Worker Roles